Resto Druid Guide: Glyphs

Druids don’t get a lot of choices for glyphs. Here’s a review of the ones available to us.

Prime

There is really no question when it comes to which Prime Glyphs to choose.

The good:

Glyph of Lifebloom – Increases the critical strike chance of your Lifebloom by 10%. Lifebloom is something you should be keeping up 100% of the time, so this is a very valuable glyph. The crit applies to both the ticks and the bloom.

Glyph of Rejuvenation – Increases the healing done by your Rejuvenation by 10%. Rejuv should still be getting a lot of use for raid healing so this is a nice glyph.

Glyph of Swiftmend – Your Swiftmend no longer consumes a Regrowth or Rejuvenation effect from the target. Excellent for two reasons: First, we don’t have to spend the mana to re-apply the HoT if it’s consumed. Second, if you consume another druid’s HoTs you will receive a beating.

The bad:

Glyph of Regrowth – Your Regrowth heal over time will automatically refresh its duration on targets below 25% health. This is a poor choice for a number of reasons: Regrowth is too expensive and not used much, the HoT only lasts for 6 seconds and ticks for an insubstantial amount, no one should be under 25% health for too long. Skip this one. *We’ve been promised a change for this glyph so it may become more useful in the future*

Major

In the Major Glyphs, we’ve got two clear winners and then a choice between two situational glyphs.

The good:

Glyph of Rebirth – Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health. With this glyph we don’t have to worry so much about battle rezzing at the perfect time to avoid our target dying again due to raid-wide damage. This also saves the mana it would take to heal the rezzed person.

The Situational:

Glyph of Healing Touch – When you cast Healing Touch, the cooldown on your Nature’s Swiftness is reduced by 10 seconds. If you don’t have Nature’s Swiftness in your spec, obviously this is a bad choice. If you do it could be useful in order to get out more emergency heals.

Glyph of Innervate – When Innervate is cast on a friendly target other than the caster, the caster will gain 50% of the Innervates effect. I’d place this above Glyph of HT in terms of usefulness, but it depends on your group makeup. If you play with another resto druid, definitely take this and trade Innervates with them. If some mean raid leader expects you to Innervate other people (the horror!), definitely take it. If you’re the only resto druid and you use your Innervates on yourself, it becomes useless.

Minor

Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth – Your rebirth spell no longer requires a reagent. This is the most useful minor for me. It saves an inventory slot and helps avoid the embarrassment of having to announce that you can’t battle rez because you have no reagents.

Glyph of Mark of the Wild – The cost of Mark of the Wild is reduced by 50%. This is useful if you need to buff someone mid-fight.

Glyph of the Treant – Your Tree of Life form now resembles a Treant. If you don’t care for looking like Grampa tree, you can go back to wilted broccoli for your Tree of Life look.

Glyph of Aquatic Form – Increases your swim speed by 50% when in Aquatic Form. This could come in handy if any underwater fights are introduced, but for now it’s just nice for swimming around Vashj’ir.

Glyph of Dash – Reduces the cooldown on your Dash ability by 20%. Could occasionally be useful if you use kitty>dash to move around in fights.

Don’t forget to carry around some Dust of Disappearance so you can switch your glyphs to suit particular fights.